PLM and Integrated Project and Process Tools

Let me start today from asking you a question. How do you run your company? Regardless on size, scale and nature, the answer is simple in my view – processes and projects. It won’t surprise you if I say sometimes projects go out of schedule, and processes are stuck. Every company requires a solution to manage processes and projects these days. Do you think you can solve these problems by emails and spreadsheets? The project or process management solution are needed. I was reading Steve Bedder post – Is that a bottleneck in my process? Steve brings an example of how process and project management capabilities are integrated in PLM 360 – new cloud PLM product from Autodesk. Here is an interesting passage:

The Project Management app provides you with a live view of where all the individual tasks\items within the project are up to, as they are moved along their process by the people managing that part of the project, the top level project automatically updates accordingly. You can also quickly and easily link through to view any of the data that is being tracked and managed within each of the project tasks (assuming you have the permissions to do so).

The key aspect in this functionality to me is the ability to integrate process and project tasks with relevant “data”. FPLM project management integration tradeoffs. There are many independent process and project tools that can be used in the company. How important to have integrated project and processes tools?

At the same time, I can see many innovative and independent tools primarily focusing on project, process and task management – starting from traditional well known Microsoft Project and going to cloud-based Basecamp, Zoho, Clarizen and many others. While project management is not a new discipline, I can see many companies are trying to come with interesting user experience, available on many devices working in a different way. One of my favorites for the last time was do.com claiming so-called “social project management”

What is my conclusion? Integrated vs. best in class. The dilemma isn’t new. I have an integrated GPS in my car. At the same I found myself many times using my iPhone to find a place and then enter the address into GPS system. To get right information to drive project management tool is an important function. At the same time, interaction with people usability and experience will matter as well. The car with Google’s maps in dash is probably a right solution. Integrated best-in-class class solutions – sounds like a good idea :). Just my thoughts…

An interesting post was published by Luna-Tech research about the Business Process Management redefinition. Only few years ago, PLM was very focused about Collaborative Business Processes. These days I see PLM and Business Processes are not going very often together. My take is that PLM learned BPM implementation lessons. It…

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